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Dear Nutrition Coalition supporters,
I’m happy to share this op-ed, just published in The Hill, by two former US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee members, which makes the case that our chronic disease problem is due to our flawed US Dietary Guidelines.
"Our guidelines are part of the problem," they write. This is correct!
It starts off:
Whatever your opinion of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he’s the first national candidate to platform the issue of chronic disease in America. To address this crisis, for children and adults alike, our response should be bipartisan.
And continues:
...The guidelines represent more than just suggestions. They’re the nation’s nutritional North Star, guiding everything from school lunches to military and hospital food and dietary advice by doctors and nutritionists.
...As members (and one of us as a former chair) of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, we aimed for the highest quality reviews. Sadly, those standards have deteriorated, leading to a national nutrition policy that no longer reflects the best or most current science.
...In 2017, two landmark studies from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine delivered a critical verdict: The development process lacks scientific rigor and transparency, leading to guidelines that were not “trustworthy.” The reports made 11 concrete recommendations to improve rigor and transparency in the guidelines process. Yet, shockingly, follow-up evaluations in 2022 and 2023 revealed that the USDA had fully implemented none of them.
The result? Untrustworthy guidelines that continue to drive obesity and poor metabolic health.
...The guidelines also maintain an unfounded hostility towards saturated fats, ignoring the last decade’s worth of evidence challenging their link to heart disease. Failure to update this science has meant the continued unjustified demonization of nutrient-dense foods such as eggs, meat and full-fat dairy, which together play a crucial role in a healthy diet.
...The current lack of rigorous methodology is akin to playing a sports game with no referees, no rules and no sidelines — an open invitation to cherry-picking and bias. We’ve seen this play out in real time. In 2020, the expert committee ignored over 20 review papers from independent teams of scientists from around the world, which concluded that strong evidence is lacking for the continued caps on saturated fats. This selective use of evidence undermines the credibility of the entire process.
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I hope that you will read and share this op-ed. If you’d like, you can also send it to members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees to let them know that you support this language in the Farm Bill.
My very best,
Nina
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